Fish Focus

LARGEST SEAFOOD FAIR BREAKS RECORDS

Fish Focus

Largest Seafood Fair Breaks Records. The 27th edition of Seafood Expo Global and 21st edition of Seafood Processing Global achieved a new record in terms of exhibit space, making this year the most successful one in the expo’s history. The event, produced by Diversified Communications, took place from 7-9 May in Brussels, Belgium at the Brussels Expo.

The annual seafood event brought in a total of 29,288 buyers and suppliers from around the globe and across the industry. This year’s exposition broke records with 2,020 exhibiting companies – an increase of 74 companies compared to 2018 – coming from 89 countries to present their newest seafood products, services, processing and packaging equipment.The event covered 40,625 net square meters of exhibit space, surpassing 2018’s record by 1,303 square meters and welcomed new exhibiting countries Angola, Fiji, Greenland, Guyana, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Solomon Islands, Swaziland, Tanzania and Uganda. 74 national and regional pavilions were present, including new regional pavilions from South Korea and Taiwan.

“The event’s success continues to prove the importance of these three days of business and networking opportunities for the global seafood industry,” said Liz Plizga, group vice-president for Diversified Communications. “We thrive on bringing the seafood community together and providing them with a platform that contributes to their business goals.”

“It’s an excellent fair for people who are connected to the industry to attend,” said an account manager from Seafood Connection. “We had great success this year with more visitors to our stand,” he added.

Visitors in attendance this year came from 155 countries and included seafood buyers from restaurants, supermarkets, hotels, catering services, importers, distributors, seafood markets, as well as equipment and packaging buyers, and more.  Among the attendees, 512 high-volume buyers from retail, foodservices and distribution took part in the event’s Key Buyer program.

“My whole team agreed [Seafood Expo Global] is our favorite trade show of the year,” commented a buyer from HelloFresh, one of the Key Buyers who was at the event.

Awards were presented for the best seafood products represented at the exposition during the Seafood Excellence Global awards reception. On 7 May, the company Viciunai Group of Belgium won the Best Retail Product category with its Surimi Noodles Wok Style. Kingfish Zeeland BV of the Netherlands won the grand prize for Best HORECA (hotel/restaurant/catering)